Friday, May 10, 2013

Reverend’s Reviews: A Great Gatsby

Roadsters roar, flappers flap and F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s words often leap literally from the page — in 3D no
less — in Baz Luhrmann’s flashy new take on the classic novel TheGreat Gatsby.
Livelier than any previous screen version (notably the sleep-inducing 1974
iteration that starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow), it is now playing
nationwide and will open the Cannes Film Festival next week.

If, like me, your primary exposure to Fitzgerald’s
work was back in high school, there may be an initial, understandable hesitance
to revisit it now. I didn’t remember much of the writer’s
lauded prose nor the plot’s details, and other pieces of required reading
(notably Shakespeare’s Macbeth
and Orwell’s 1984) made
more of an impression on me at the time than The
Great Gatsby.

The stylish-to-a-fault Luhrmann has had some great successes
(Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin
Rouge!) but his last epic, Australia,
was a big flop everywhere but Down Under. He definitely redeems himself
artistically with his immersive, visually spectacular approach to the achingly
romantic saga of Jazz-age gazillionaire Jay Gatsby’s love for married
debutante Daisy Buchanan. Luhrmann doesn’t direct the film so much
as he meticulously choreographs it, from every large-scale dance sequence down
to the opening and closing of dining hall doors, and even seemingly the
individual steps Gatsby takes during walks out onto his pier. The
director receives superb support in this regard from choreographer John
O’Connell and director of photography Simon Duggan.

As he did in Moulin
Rouge!, Luhrmann employs a soundtrack of modern-day dance and
hip-hop tunes plus a few period songs all supervised by Shawn
“Jay-Z” Carter (aka Mr. Beyonce Knowles, whose hit “Crazy in
Love” makes an appearance here). Most of them are used effectively
to accentuate the racial and class distinctions of the 1920’s. They
aren’t as pervasive nor are they arranged as frenetically as songs by
Madonna, Fat Boy Slim and other contemporary artists were in Moulin Rouge! Luhrmann also wisely
discards the winking, camp spirit that infused much of his earlier,
Oscar-winning hit.

While the adapted screenplay by Luhrmann and regular
collaborator Craig Pearce takes some liberties with Fitzgerald’s text (I
don’t recall so many automobile races in the source material), it remains
absolutely faithful to the ultimately tragic main storyline.
Gatsby’s readiness to spare no expense in his obsessive effort to reclaim
Daisy’s affections and, subsequently, the past is heightened by CGI
elements added to Catherine Martin’s already-lavish sets and
costumes. Of note, the screenplay and lead performances underscore a
long-debated homoerotic dimension to the relationship between Gatsby and his
neighbor, writer/narrator Nick Carraway. This is fairly subtle in the new
movie, even if Gatsby seems unusually intent on getting Carraway into his
under-used swimming pool.

Speaking of the performances, Luhrmann has cast his Great Gatsby splendidly. Leonardo
DiCaprio, who looks better and better with age, has never been better as an
actor than he is here. As Gatsby, he runs the full gamut of personas and
emotions. He is by turns suave, insecure, aloof, desperate, omnipotent,
vulnerable, childish, triumphant and broken. It is hard to decide whether
his best scene in the film is when he rages at Tom Buchanan in their
over-heated room at the Plaza Hotel or when he nervously waits for
Daisy’s tea-time arrival at Nick’s cottage.

Former Spider-Man Tobey
Maguire, still charmingly boyish at the age of 37, is an excellent
foil as Nick, while Carey Mulligan conveys suitable innocence but is morally
devastating in the end as the conflicted Daisy. Relative big-screen
newcomer Joel Edgerton (Warrior)
may make the biggest impression as brutish, unfaithful Tom Buchanan.
Terrific supporting performances are given by Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan
Baker, Isla Fisher as the doomed Myrtle Wilson, Jason Clarke (recently seen in Zero Dark Thirty) as George Wilson and
Aussie vet Jack Thompson who, in perhaps this version’s biggest departure
from the novel, plays a kindly psychiatrist tending to a post-traumatic and “morbidly
alcoholic” Nick.

Whether The Great Gatsby
will redeem Luhrmann commercially will be known within a few weeks. If
nothing else, his invigorating vision of the literary classic should go over great
in high school classrooms after it is released on DVD, maybe even better than
the book itself.